The "top reviews" are all positive, but all for different products (this is supposed to be a pack of Lightning cables) - phone cases, LG G6 accessories, a rifle stand - and it's the 4th product when searching for "lightning cable".
It looks like they can just completely change the content of an existing listing, including customer reviews, without any oversight.
If anyone is up for a good laugh you can check out reviews here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071WYNY6N/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i...
I've bought a few other things on Amazon that were counterfeit, which is why I cancelled my prime subscription and now look at other stores first. Never ordered climbing gear, but fake jackets are bad enough.
I ordered from BackCountry and loved the gloves just as much as I always had. I don't know if the Amazon listing had truly been hijacked by a counterfeit, but I'm glad I didn't risk it and I tend to try to go to other sites first now.
In all my years, I've never needed the shatter resistance offered by ballistic glasses. Think about how unfortunate it would be to find out on the range that your safety gear is a pair of $2 plastic lenses.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_eyewear#Performance_...
Another one is counterfeit tourniquets. It seems like you basically can't order them off Amazon with any confidence that you're getting the genuine article.
Legislation is already weak there. International legislation is none existened..
Is it legal what Amazon is doing (or rather, not doing)? Well, make it illegal.
Anyhow, I think generally we agree: Amazon should be punished for this. If the legal framework does not allow for this, it needs to be adjusted accordingly.
No, the people sit in the Amazon offices. If you sell stolen goods you're lucky if you aren't charged with fencing but you can bet you won't be reimbursed if those goods get claimed. If you sell fake products, you should be held accountable just the same.
Sure, pass the buck up the chain but this should never allow the consumer to be knowingly harmed by an intermediary knowingly enabling the sale of counterfeit items with no accountability.´
Amazon is knowingly allowing fraud to happen. It's a risk they're willing to take and they can get away with it because there's no legal accountability. They could try to curb it but that would impact the bottom line. The only way to fix this is regulation (i.e. laws) and more consistent application of it.
The market can't fix it because there's no market incentive to fix it.
I'm not sure what you're calling outdated but it's been like this at least since whenever that book was written. The only thing that has changed is that consumer rights have been eroded in the US over decades, reducing the financial risk of inaction.
People may do something out of the kindness of their hearts. Corporations only do what is either directly profitable or inevitable. Expecting a corporation to do something because it is "right" is absurd. Corporations -- contrary to US legal opinion -- aren't people.
We don't even have an extradition treaty with China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_China
> China does not allow for the extradition of its own nationals.
It reminds me of the case where someone got in trouble with customs because Amazon substituted a counterfeit for the genuine article he ordered and paid for.
It's bizarro world.
You can't even buy a slingshot at Walmart in my state.
They're everywhere. Amazon is just convenient.
If you want to see for yourself, well...
Unless you're plugged into the community for the activity enough to know the reputations of big online vendors, you've got the same problem of low quality, counterfeits, poor fulfillment, payment processing, etc.
Amazon might be easy, but knowing their products may be counterfeit, the company pays next to no tax, and has underpaid staff on awful contracts, I've not bought anything from them for years.
[1] https://www.patrolbase.co.uk/dk/airsoft-glasses-and-goggles
Airsoft glasses is something I can find in any mall here.
A quick search resulted only in less safety critical gear like maps, clothing etc.. Not saying that this isn't dangerous, too, but are their fake carabiners, ropes and helmets?
Which talks about fake safety logos and https://www.outsideonline.com/2073311/dangerous-climbing-har... which is about eBay rather than Amazon. My personal experience is that Amazon suggests obviously sketchy, NON-UIAA / CE gear rather than established brands. I've bought a lot of caving, climbing, and mountaineering equipment on Amazon and haven't had a problem yet buying Petzl, Elderid, BD etc.
Here is a warning that has been put up in our local climbing center: https://imgur.com/a/R0PGiGI
There are some sellers on AliExpress who stock top quality clones.
Now, if I try to get the original one I'll have to pay 5x and even then I might receive a counterfeit.
Getting it shipped from the source makes final price 7x of the clone.
It's 80DKK (€11) in Denmark.
There is no domination in capitalism. A new competitor always shows up. Consumers are not loyal to Amazon- they will shop anywhere. If you don't believe me look at the airline industry.
Don't blame Amazon if you can't be bothered to use another store. But I am Dutch, I would walk 10 kilometres just to save 50 cents as a matter of principle.
Capitalism is inherently self-destructive because it tends towards a monopoly and unregulated monopolies make competition impossible (especially if they're "vertically integrated", i.e. monopolies at every level of the value chain). Regulation solves this by restraining capitalism and actively working against it. But companies like Amazon and other US megacorps have been lobbying against regulation for decades and in the US they have been extremely effective.
"Don't blame Amazon" is a position from privilege. I make enough money to be able to waste hours clicking through various websites to find the best deal. Whether or not I shop local is largely a question of laziness. But assuming this holds true for everyone is absurd.
There simply is no direct competitor to Amazon. Sure, there are specialised shops and some of them may have put in the effort to gain their target audience's trust and brand recognition, but everyone already has an Amazon account and if you are already paying every month for Prime shipping (now included in your VOD package!) why not just shop Amazon -- you'll likely order something from them anyway, so just throw it in and maybe you pay enough to hit the threshold for that "plus" product that's been collecting dust in your shopping card.
Amazon is a profit-driven corporation. Amazon drives down prices to gain market share and starve competitors. Then it repeats that process with different markets so customers come to rely on them for most of their online shopping (ideally also reinforced via products like Alexa, Kindle or Fire). Then they ramp up prices or lower costs (i.e. quality controls) as customers are too heavily invested to switch to a competitor for any given niche and their service range is too broad for any competitor to meaningfully offer an alternative. That's how you succeed as a corporation under capitalism at this point.
I'm not angry with Amazon because Amazon is winning at the game of capitalism. I'm just saying that maybe we shouldn't be forced to play the game because the way its rules work mean it will invariably end -- and that's something we generally don't want for our society as a whole.
It doesn't even matter whether we right now are experiencing "late game" (i.e. late stage capitalism) or not: the rules are already causing harm and literally killing people, so that's enough of a reason to want to stop.
That said, you can't just decide to stop playing if you're deeply entangled in the system. If everyone around you pretends private ownership is a thing and you don't happen to already "own" everything you need to sustain yourself without interacting with them, "not playing" means giving up access to things you need to survive.
Jeff Bezos could probably buy a private island, gather a group of likeminded people and form a commune and not have to worry about the basic necessities of life for the rest of his days. But a wage employee living from paycheck to paycheck doesn't have that luxury. Being able to exit the game without losing everything is only possible if you're already winning.
TL;DR: Regulation is good because it changes the rules of the game of capitalism, not because it enforces them.
If I can avoid Amazon I will, if I can’t I try to order directly from the manufacturer and no other seller.
Often when I try to find something just a little bit out of the ordinary, Amazon tends to be the only option.
And when there is another option, even something like best buy, their experience can be pretty bad (my best buy account is in some sort of limbo where I have been able to create it but can't access it .. so I have to do all my purchases in guest mode).
For any readers from Germany, booklooker.de is great for books. You can buy used and new books with an extremely efficient, no-nonsense user interface. Fulfilled by large and small bookstores and even private sellers. You see the actual vendor before you buy.
And reviews only tell half the story. If a $700 product gets four stars but its $100 alternative does as well despite being nowhere near as good, what good are reviews? I mean people putting down reviews don't have both products to compare with one another.
I first started hearing about it around the 2017 eclipse, when people ordering glasses designed to let you safely stare into the sun got fakes that wouldn’t do the job properly, but it seemed to already be pretty widespread by now.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/13/how-to-p...